2014's Golden Globes spotlight spectrum of black films

By Peniel E. Joseph, The Root

Posted:
01/10/2014 03:20:33 PM CST

The critically lauded “12 Years a Slave” has been nominated in several prestigious categories in this Sunday's Golden Globe Awards — and the conspicuous presence of black directors, actors and films this awards season offers a chance to reflect on Hollywood's tortured racial past and hopeful future.

The Golden Globes, which are dominated by the more liberal foreign press, unofficially begin an awards season that will formally conclude at the Academy Awards ceremony on March 2.

Black actors Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael B. Jordan, Idris Elba, Forest Whitaker and Lupita Nyong'o have been singled out for praise by critics, and “12 Years” topped virtually every major newspaper's “Best Movie of the Year” category. These plaudits — justly deserved — prompt the question of whether we're finally witnessing an enduring shift in Hollywood's relationship to race. It's a relationship that tends to run in cycles.

The historic wins for best actor and actress scored by Denzel Washington and Halle Berry in 2002 led some to prematurely celebrate a new era for blacks in Hollywood. But hopes that African-Americans would compete for new opportunities proved too optimistic.

The recent success of “The Best Man Holiday,” the rare sequel (13 years after the original debuted) more successful than its progenitor, has led some to speak of a renaissance in black film.

But a brief history lesson is in order. Oscar Micheaux proved a pioneer of race films in the 1920s and 1930s. Auteurs such as Gordon Parks Sr. and Melvin Van Peebles ushered in a wave of independent black filmmaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Major studios quickly imitated the trend in the short-lived but still popular “blacksploitation” era, which introduced black urban staples like “Shaft,” “Super Fly” and “The Mack” to a generation of young people.

Spike Lee's emergence during the late 1980s heralded a new wave of black filmmaking that was smart, edgy and fiercely independent. Lee's films helped two generations of aspiring filmmakers: Veterans such as Charles Burnett (who directed 1977's masterpiece “Killer of Sheep”) and Haile Gerima (“Sankofa”) found new opportunities to ply their craft, while directors ranging from Julie Dash (“Daughters of the Dust”) to the more popular John Singleton (“Boyz n the Hood”) became the new face of black Hollywood.

This movement reached its peak in the '90s and early 2000s with a spate of movies (“The Wood,” “Love Jones,” “Brown Sugar”) that offered a panoramic spectrum of the black experience. Yet these opportunities given to black directors and actors appeared to vanish as quickly as they developed, victimized by poor box-office returns, studios overly eager to abandon “black projects” at the first sign of trouble and mediocre scripts and films.

The most exciting aspect, then, of 2013's resurgence has been the high quality of black-centered films and the corresponding depth and breadth of their portrayal of the black experience at the local (“Fruitvale Station”), national (“12 Years a Slave” and “The Butler”) and global (“Mandela”) levels.

Yet despite this optimism, the nagging feeling that this is part of the cyclical pattern of feast and famine regarding black films will remain a troubling reality of our cultural landscape until more African-Americans attain the power to create films of their own.

The ability to write, direct and act in a movie is surpassed by the power to finance certain scripts and themes. Major studios are, of course, interested in profit, but also motivated by issues and stories that resonate with their own cultural backgrounds and personal interests. Black films for the most part appear to stand outside of these interests, even as the African-American experience remains at the heart, for better and worse, of our national saga. Ultimately, movies about slavery, civil rights and the ordinary lives of working-class black Americans should not be once-in-a-decade events that garner extraordinary attention. They are part of the very fabric of not only the black experience, but the American one as well.

And at this year's Golden Globe Awards, that experience will be well recognized.

ODESSA, Texas (AP) — A West Texas man has been charged with impersonating an officer by using sirens and flashing lights to skip to the head of the drive-thru line at a fast-food restaurant. Full Story